A calculated “bug hunt” is underway at iTriage in downtown Denver.
With laptops and tablets on a desk, contract employees Antonio Rozier and Amelia Dickerson scan through the backbone of a health symptom and information website and mobile app, using screen readers that convert text to Braille or speech to determine how well they work with assistive technology for the vision-impaired.
Rozier and Dickerson, both blind, went to iTriage via the Blind Institute of Technology, a fledgling Denver-based nonprofit founded to place workers with vision impairments in the information technology sector.
The goal: To boost the number of blind people in the workforce.
In June, the workforce participation rate of 16- to 64-year-olds who are blind or have difficulty seeing was 37.7 percent, according to an American Foundation for the Blind mining of U.S. Census data. That compares with an overall labor force participation rate of 62.6 percent and sits just a shade above the median rate of 37.5 percent from June 2009 to June 2015.
“The opportunity that BIT has is truly solving for a national epidemic of unemployment with very capable, very talented, really passionate individuals,” said Mike Hess, who founded BIT two years ago. “You have the greatest, untapped resource in America just champing at the bit.”
Hess speaks from experience. Prior to launching the organization, he earned six figures at Broomfield-based Level 3 Communications Inc. as a software engineer.
“I believe that I was a very successful engineer managing seven-figure projects because of my blindness,” he said. “Not despite my blindness, but because of my blindness.”
He said his work was precise and efficient, and he was a strong listener.
Knowing that others offered similar skill sets but faced hurdles in landing a job, Hess saw the need for a way to serve as an intermediary.
“This is absolutely the right thing to do,” he said. “The more folks that we get off Social Security benefits and we get into gainful employment, … it’ll reduce the burden on Social Security, and they’ll be contributing back into that system.”
More placements
After a slow start — it took a few months for BIT to place its first worker — the organization is gaining steam.
BIT placed 15 individuals in 2014 and is on its way to potentially tripling that number this year. Some of Colorado’s largest employers, including Aetna and DaVita, have hired BIT-connected individuals for contract, part-time and full-time positions.
DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc.’s information technology engagement manager Matt Kissinger called partnering with the BIT a “no-brainer.”
The addition of Eric Arther to the Denver-based company’s IT team in October took minimal accommodations. The ZoomText accessibility software that Arther uses ran less than $500, Kissinger said.
“To me, there’s really no reason not to,” he said. “It was another avenue of talent, another source of finding good-quality IT folks we weren’t exposed to before.”
Arther, 28, was diagnosed with vision impairment about 11 years ago. With a blind spot in his center of vision, Arther can see only what’s in his periphery.
After earning a master’s degree in business administration, Arther became discouraged by his inability to land a job. He went into business with his father running a repair outfit for animal-cremation equipment. But he desired other opportunities.
After pairing with BIT, Arther was hired by DaVita and now works on the company’s Launch, Learning & Development team.
“With BIT, there’s full disclosure,” he said. “(Blindness) is not a problem; it’s part of who you are.”
Using ZoomText software, Arther can scroll in to enlarge the text by more than 50 times and also can have the software read words back to him, if needed. To provide a little extra assistance, Arther stuck clear rubber nodes on certain buttons to map out his keyboard for his fingers.
Aetna’s iTriage
hired Dickerson and Rozier to make the mobile health app easier for blind clients to use.
Dickerson tests the Android platform, and Rozier tests Web and iOS platforms after each iteration, “a two-week sprint of software development,” said Kelly Shuster, accessibility leader at iTriage.
The two spend hours analyzing how the readers react to the code in each platform and sit with the developers to relay the feedback.
“When we started working with BIT, developers wanted to make accessible applications, but they didn’t really know what it meant to program for accessibility,” Shuster said via e-mail. “Now that we’ve had a chance to work with BIT, all of us are much more familiar with common pitfalls and have been able to start coding defensively from the get-go.”
More businesses appear to be mindful of producing accessible technologies, said Chris Danielsen, spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind.
While technology has helped to level the playing field for the blind, it also has created some barriers of its own, he said. Assistive technologies can’t always keep up with the frenzied pace of innovation.
“Just when the legal and regulatory standards get all hooked up with technology as it is … some new technology or protocol comes along that just throws everything back to zero again,” Danielsen said.
The National Federation of the Blind encourages companies to consider accessibility from the start rather than having to backtrack and build in work-arounds. Danielsen’s organization also is working closely with technology developers and startups to advance the products coming on the market.
But the biggest obstacle remains the perception that people who are blind have a reduced capacity to be independent, he said.
When one of the questions in a job interview is “How will you be able to find the bathroom,” it exemplifies the amount of progress that needs to be made, Danielsen said.
“When the potential employer is setting the bar that low — you’re having to get past the question of whether you can do what a 5-year-old child can do — that really puts an interview back quite a ways,” he said.
Joe Strechay, CareerConnect program manager for the American Foundation for the Blind, said applicants, too, sometimes need help putting their disability in context.
“We’re still battling with some of the same attitudes going on before — on both sides,” he said. “Don’t get stuck in the details of your medical condition. Talk about the practicality of how your vision impacts your work.”
Opportunities
Changes to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 two years ago that set a goal for federal contractors to have at least 7 percent of their workforce consist of individuals with disabilities are helping create opportunities, Strechay said. And gains are being made in the private sector.
“We’re moving to a more accessible world,” Strechay said, “but it’s taking time.”
Dickerson of iTriage worries about falling behind in the meantime.
“We talk about how much of our world comes to us through technology, so people need to be ready to move and change and learn,” she said. “I am ready to do all of that. But since I cannot see, I need people to provide another way for me to access it.”
Alicia Wallace: 303-954-1939, awallace@denverpost.com or twitter.com/aliciawallace
